Keeper's Requiem
by VeroniqueChaput
Summary: Dante and Lady have been assigned a new mission: to resolve a murder mystery of a torn corpse outside a sinister mound called Euronymous's Heap. Vergil seems interested in the mystery.My very first fic criticise, but no flaming! Rated M to be safe. OCs


A tall black figure stood upon a sacred mount called Euronymous's Heap. This mound was a sacrilegious tomb for exorcists, possibly Communists, psychics and basically anybody who was considered to be a threat to religion.

This figure was the grave Keeper and protector of the blasphemous underground sepulcher.

The grave Keeper's identity was shrouded in shadow and mist; nobody had ever disturbed the peace of Euronymous's Heap. But on this full moon night, the mist wasn't apparent and the moon cast a cold, blue tinge upon the lonesome hill.

Great exorcists who'd become legends and then myths lay here and the Keeper's job was to guard their souls from outsiders.

The many souls screamed and pounded from below, but the Keeper was accustomed to their agonized yells. The last Keeper had been fed up with the noise and had been lured into the cursed tomb. The present Keeper was intelligent and watched the previous Keeper carefully on his job. The Keeper was quite young then, but saw how the previous Keeper's body was torn under the weight of numerous souls.

The Keeper had gathered the gory remnants of a man and tossed them into the tomb, using Succorbenoth's keys to open it.

What the Keeper had seen was horrific. The vision had partly blinded the Keeper. Euronymous, the corpse-eating demon, caught at the young Keeper's arm and whispered foreign words into the ear of the Keeper. All at once, the Keeper understood His words and became clothed with the attire of a Keeper. The Keeper was equipped with Thammuz's weapons, Succorbenoth's keys, Uvall's wisdom, Euronymous's bloodlust, Jezebeth's deceit, Asmodeus's wrath, Mastema's manipulation and Leonard's black magic. But, along with those attributes, the Keeper also had deep sorrow and inevitably suffered for every second the Keeper lived.

The Keeper was strong enough to resist the calls from the damned souls that knocked and rumbled the ground beneath the Keeper's feet.

The Curse of a Keeper was that family and any friendships or bonds of love were destroyed along with hopes of escape. During the day, the Keeper was a stone guardian that stood on the hill. The Keeper was never permitted to move from that position in the middle of the hill unless instructed to or if there was a threat nearby.

The Keeper was bound to be alone and doomed for eternity. The Keeper was to lull the damned and the demons to sleep with music. The Keeper played music for the sentimental and somber. Only the damned and demons heard the Keeper's mesmerizing elegies. This Keeper was virtuosic with the 10,000 piped organ in the massive, abandoned and hidden Murmur Cathedral. The pipe organ, piano and voice of the Keeper were abilities and talents they had to adapt to. They were also the least that the Keeper was to have already known. The previous Keeper had been able to play the guitar and drums, so he had used them to fuel and feed the souls and demons.

The Grave Keeper watched the moon and listened to the whistle of the wind to ignore the cries from the tomb. When it was midnight, the Keeper had to go to the Murmur Cathedral and put the demons and souls to sleep until the next sunset, when they'd wake up to pound and rattle again. The Keeper never slept for the job of guarding the tomb, and subsequently the Cathedral. To the outside world, the Keeper was as good as dead. After all, the hill was hidden from outsiders with dense woodlands and a mighty fence of stakes and stone guardians of the trapped souls of passed Keepers. The present Keeper stood on the hill to ward off persistent trespassers and do the demons' dirty work.

The Keeper's face was shadowed, but a slit silver eye glowed from the darkness of the Keeper's face. The Keeper raised a gloved hand to the face and touched it with long, elegant fingers. The Keeper raised the gloved hand to the moonlight and saw that the fingers were wet. A drop of blood was on the Keeper's finger.

The Keeper let the hand drop to the side and blood dripped onto the ornately carved cold stone pedestal. The statuesque Keeper stood silently on the pedestal, waiting.

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A red coat flapped in the wind like a flag. A young man blew a puff of gun smoke from his handgun as he stood triumphantly over a corpse-like creature that sprawled on the ground in pain.

An attractive young woman with short dark brown hair nodded, her heterochromic pinkish brown and hazel eyes beaming.

"Very impressive," she commented. "Very impressive, indeed, Dante."

"What're you cooking for me, Lady?" the silver haired Dante replied, flattered. "I hope it's a surprise. I do love surprises."

"Nothing new," Lady said simply, shrugging. "Just a couple of these…"

She drew her throwing knives that Dante had given her as a gift. She spun rapidly, closing in on the lesser demons that approached her. She gave one an uppercut and rose into the air with it. She twirled again and beheaded it before slashing ferociously at the other demons in the whirl. Lady landed in a crouch, with her eyes set on the floor and her victims dropping into a perfect circle around her.

"Ooh!" Dante winced. "So feisty!"

"That's my way, Dante," she replied, grinning proudly. "What's the assignment?"

"A young man disappeared six years ago in a place called Euronymous's Heap," Dante replied. "Three years later, a piece of his arm was found just outside the place."

"An investigation?" Lady inquired ecstatically.

"Perhaps," he said. "There are some stories in the streets about a hooded figure that lurks there at night. This figure may be the answer to this investigation and may be a potential suspect. Or just an urban legend."

"Gotcha!" Lady exclaimed. "Where to first?"

"There was a young man who'd been spotted leaving a brothel near the woods surrounding Euronymous's Heap. He was found dead, dry."

"You mean sucked dry? As in vampire dry?"

"Yes. Bang! There may be some link to our suspect from that vampiric killer."

"Did anyone see the killer?"

"Surprisingly, no. He turned a corner and the next minute, he was dead; shriveled and pale with severe blood loss."

"To the brothel then?"

"Bam, baby! You got it!"

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A youth with silver hair and cold, icy blue eyes stood in an ancient library. He wore a blue coat, intricately embroidered with intertwining white thorns. His skin was pale and almost blue in the scarce light.

He reached for a book labeled 'The Power of Demons: Euronymous's Heap'. It was dusty and had obviously hadn't been read in a while. He blew the dust off and coughed.

"Curse my human blood!" he swore under his breath, followed by another coughing fit.

The book was ancient; almost as ancient as the library itself.

The spine was decorated with dark and perplexing jewels that absorbed light rather than reflect it. The book had a lock that looked like black skeletal hands, clutching the book tightly.

The young man took out a key that he'd found in one of the pockets of a coat that he hadn't worn ever since he was a teenager.

It looked like the book: skeletal, ancient and costly. The key was black and suited the book in appearance. The same curious jewels decorated the key and a large, white moonstone was set in the centre of the key. Sharing the same center with the moonstone was a bloodstone that was completely red with the different tones of fresh blood.

He unlocked the book carefully. The black claws loosened on the book just enough to open it.

His eyebrows furrowed as he examined the contents of the book. Turning to a desk, a dim lit candle sat beside a pot of what looked like black and vermillion ink mingled together in a coloured spiral. A dry fountain pen sat on the desk. The ink didn't mix, so if the youth wanted a plain blood red, he could dip the pen in the red ink. Hence, he could have a plain black and even a curious mixture of both colours.

The handsome and grim youth walked to the table and sat on the chair, taking notes and drawing diagrams as summaries of the book's useful content.

Black and gory vermillion ink stained his long, gloved fingers as he hastily scribbled interpretations. The thick scrolls of parchment that he wrote on were blotched with ink and fingerprints.

He smiled wryly to himself. He may be an arrogant man but he was also much opposed to his frivolous younger twin brother. He was cold, lethal and dead serious. His only passion was his ambition for power. Most likely, he was able to sacrifice everything he had for limitless power. Vergil, was his name. Like the Publius Vergilius Maro who might've inspired Durante degli Alighieri… or the literary Vergil who guided Dante through Hell and Purgatory in the Divine Comedy?

This book held secrets and codes. Most of it was written in an ancient and unknown text. Vergil had to sit and attempt at the deciphering of the manuscript. Some of the text, he could decipher into the repeated words 'The Grave Keeper' and 'Demons'. He knew that much right now. Maybe, he could spend the whole night decoding the manuscript. That wasn't a problem. Vergil was an egotistical insomniac, addicted to power.


End file.
